Zygmunt Steuermann

Zygmunt Steuermann (5 February 1899 – December 1941) was a Polish footballer who played as a forward^[1] and is one of the most renowned members of the Hasmonea Lwów Football Club.

Life[]

Born in Sambor, then in Austro-Hungarian Galicia, Steuermann was Jewish^[2]^[3] and a member of a Polonized Jewish family.

At the age of 12 he joined the local . During World War I he fled to Vienna, where he continued his training in a variety of sport clubs, including , , and . After the war he returned to Poland and in 1920 started a semi-professional career in Korona Sambor. During the following year he moved to Lwów (modern Lviv, Ukraine), where he joined the sports club. In 1923 he was transferred to Hasmonea Lwów, the most important Jewish football club in Poland and one of the four Lwów-based clubs playing in the first league.^[4] He remained one of the most notable players of that club until 1932, when he joined Legia Warsaw.

He also played twice in the Poland national team, scoring four goals: three in a match against Turkey in 1926^[2] and one against the USA in 1928.^[5]^[6] He was one of only two first-timers in the history of the Poland national team to score a hat-trick in the first match, the other being Józef Korbas (in 1937 against Bulgaria).

During the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 he fled Warsaw and settled in his hometown, which was then annexed by the USSR. He returned to Korona Sambor, which was soon afterwards closed down and recreated as by the Soviet authorities. Following the Nazi take-over of eastern Poland, he was arrested and sent to the Lemberg Ghetto, where he died in December 1941 aged 42.